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'I've learnt to love myself': What is it like living with a visible facial difference?

By ITV News Multimedia Producer Nitya Rajan

Chloe was sitting with her friends in a London pub when a man came over to point and stare at her. He told her she looked ugly and ridiculous.

"That wasn't fun at all," she told ITV News.

Chloe has a visible facial difference, a facial birthmark she was born with.

As a teenager, she struggled with looking different from her friends.

"When I was 15, 16 onwards, I really started to feel uncomfortable in how I looked and it got to a point where I felt really miserable about myself inside, and I just felt like I wasn't pretty or like everyone else at all. Like I was never going to be accepted fully," she said.

But she can look past that now, she says with a sly smile. "Hopefully, I'm beautiful in my own way."

Chloe struggled as a teenager but says she has grown in confidence Credit: ITV News

And Chloe is not alone. At least 1.3 million people in Britain are estimated to have a visible facial difference, according to charity Changing Faces.

That includes 86,000 children of school age.

Most young people are familiar with the pressure to look a certain way.

Even so, research by Changing Faces shows that less than a third of young people would be friends with someone with a visible facial difference.

Half of the young people the charity surveyed said they has witnessed negative behaviour towards a person with a visible difference, and more than a third admitted to having acted in a negative way themselves.

That behaviour is most likely to include staring, pointing or saying something unkind to the person, or taking a photo of them, the charity said.

Agnes says she has learned to love her scars Credit: ITV News

Agnes says that sounds familiar.

She was caught in a gas explosion aged seven and the surgery for her burns has left scars on her face.